sidcode - Computer Science

Memcomputing is here to stay

2015-02-05T00:53:52+00:00

Competitive Programming is about to perish. Information Processing and Storage at the same space and time.

Now that I have your undivided attention, it would be worth the spacetime to take a look at the research being conducted on Memcomputing.

Memcomputing is a theorized notion introduced in the 70’s which is currently being realized by nanoparticles.

It utilizes the features of special materials on the nanoscale - memcomputers, memresistors, memcapacitors, meminductors.

The recent arXiv paper on Universal Memcomputing Machines convinces me that Moore’s law is here to stay. It surpasses the von Neumann bottleneck that code and data have to be stored at different places but still depend on each other. Memory devices like those mentioned above maintain a history of the current, charge, and flux respectively. This enables them to act like normal electric components as well as instill them with the properties of a transistor.

Alan Turing would be so proud!

Life is a 2-D board game!

2015-02-04T00:53:52+00:00

Conway’s Game of Life or the single-player zero sum game comprised of cellular automata with four simple rules. It was proposed by John Conway as a Scientific American article and not very long ago, it reassured me of the beauty of Mathematics.

The game has intrigued me for quite a long time.

I got the opportunity to dabble with the intricate patterns and get to know the rules when I alter the rules. The results are to say the least, quite disastrous. The conditions for Conway’s game begin to crumble down with simple changes in the rules. Simulations under way.

I am thinking along the lines of applying the Game of Life in Pattern Formation problems in Robotics. For its automaton-ness…no history, no future. Adaptability to future outcome, modification of rules as and when you like, the tenacity of the patterns. Oscillators, still lifes all can be used in different domains of Robotics.

An entire world of Robots can be imagined where all the different kinds of bots follow the rules of the game of life.

This not only controls the population, but also results in self-sufficient communities. This can teach us things about Android epistemology. For instance, a robot meant for video surveillance would not move, hence lives a Still Life. A robot meant to patrol a region frequently should be an Oscillator. The simple states of the Automata ensure crispness of pattern formation.

However it would be a challenge to deploy robots to the next states in the Automata, ensure which robots to move where, which robots to keep, which robots to summon. Virtually making a cell dead even when a robot lives there.

Cellular Automata would prove beneficial in self-organizing systems.

People tried the game with QR codes.

Fun Fact: I was introduced to Conway’s Game via a strategy board game with the same name - “Game of Life”.

A Computing Era gone by...

2014-06-28T14:55:17+05:30

Being a 90s person, mine was one of the first generation adopters of intuitive Graphical User Interfaces. It took me 18 years to properly lose my Unix virginity. It not only brought a plethora of hacking skills, but also a deep appreciation of our rich computer heritage. Computer Science is the best thing to happen to the world in the last century. Turing had a hunch - to replace the scores of women ‘computers’ calculating away during the World Wars, with a hypothetical machine that follows instructions and operates on data - continuously maintaining one of its several states.

We have come a long way since. The Computer History Museum does an awesome job at preserving the heroics of the people who contrived contraptions that made life easier.

Microsoft dominated the Unix market with its licensed platform - Xenix. DOS is heavily inspired by Unix. But then they split ways.

Much more to be added in this post. Keep looking for the buzz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_terminals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33

Refer : Unix Prog. Environment by Kernighan and Pike The Man who knew too much - Life of Alan Turing